The incorporation of location and navigation technology, such as global positioning system (GPS) technology into mobile phones and similar wireless portable devices has created a class of “location-aware” devices that allow users to communicate with other users as well as determine or even view the location of other users on their own device. Such devices may be configured to display a regional map and the location of other users and/or places of interest on their device. This greatly enhances the social networking capability of such devices, beyond simple voice or text-based communication by allowing users to quickly find friends and associates and coordinate activities based on respective locations.
The incorporation of location display capability in mobile communication or computing devices, however, raises particular concerns about security and privacy. Such capability can be inadvertently used to locate or track people in situations where such location information is not desired to be made known. Although present systems may allow users to hide their location from display on other user devices, such systems typically allow for wholesale enabling or disabling of the location display feature for an entire class of users. What is needed, therefore, is a location-aware mobile communication system that incorporates flexible security and privacy features to allow customized or context specific disabling or enabling of location display capability on user devices.